I feel you on doubts about whether or not you're just fooling yourself in a different fashion and that perhaps, just maybe, there's no real difference between yourself and the other dumbasses. I've had only one real epiphany about it.

Thusly

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But in the meantime, I have to know how to act, so that I don't accidentally turn into something I don't want to be. And the way I act is, "follow a set of principles, even if some or many or even MOST of the people involved mean absolutely nothing at all to me."

It hit me watching Full Metal Jacket. The part where the one fella is like "Sir, I have realized that whatever my response is it will be wrong, and so I have decided to stick to my guns, sir!" Or words to that effect. The dude gets promoted. That's what struck me. That instructor had only one job, to teach those men how to die trying! I therefore have news for you that may save you undue rumination.

Doktor Howl you are wrong. Whatever your beliefs, they are also wrong. This applies to every single human on earth and you are one of us.

There's real freedom in this epiphany if you're strong and wise enough. You can laugh off almost anything. You can be wrong in whatever fashion you prefer. Nothing is True, so do as you see fit. The old Illuminated dogma may be a paradox but it is not incorrect. Paradoxes are part of reality. "I know only that I know nothing" was the most correct paradox Socrates, or anyone, ever uttered, but nobody likes it. Nobody realizes what that really means. It means Science is wrong and trying to correct what it can not by means of logic and reduction. All art is a fucking beautiful lie trying to cover up wrongness(often successfully). All faiths are vanity and a chasing after the wind. Even Nihilism and similar worldviews are straight up dead ends that may lead to a wasted life.

So what to do? Whatever seems best to you. Exactly what the fools do, but instead of a hollow smirk you have a knowing GRIN. You can be wrong HARDER, FASTER, BETTER than they ever will. Taking on 6 to 2 odds for example is stupid even for a trained fighter, but you'd DO IT anyway on PRINCIPAL. That's what the fools will not have, principals. Not real ones anyway. Yours can be MORE solid for your realization that you are wrong and have chosen to "stick to your guns." Principals are a weapon. The hardest of two otherwise equal weapons tends to prevail.

So yes you are wrong about yourself.Yes, you are one of the dumbasses.(welcome to the club)Yes you may come across as a tourist to various subcultures no matter what your intent.Your "rationality" may well be as wrong as chemtrails, anti-vaxxers, Libertarians, or whatever. (I don't think this of you but it's quite possible)

That you are wrong is unimportant in itself, but realizing it poses a paradox all its own. If a dumbass realizes they are a dumbass are they still a dumbass?

I know only that I am a dumbass. Knowing that, I act anyway but with that tiny scrap of wisdom. This dumbass hopes that this was helpful to you in some way. Either way I said my piece on something I have thought about much of my life.

EVERY government is a criminal conspiracy to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few, and to suppress dissent among the rest.

Big thieves hang little thieves.

Rich people get richer by getting poor people to kill each other in the name of a phony ideal.

Kill a hundred people and you spend your life in jail. Kill a million people and you ride to the opera in a limousine.

I think someone made you Klatchian coffee and you are now knurd, the opposite of drunk. It's a state where you see reality all TOO clearly and without any comfortable delusion according to the late, great Terry Pratchett.

As for the OP I couldn't help thinking of it in context of the "you" being spoken to being God. As though He had pet humans and didn't take proper care of them and they accidentally all over this reality.